Why Barbie's New Makeover Distracts Us From the Real Issue

In her ongoing column for redbookmag.com, bestselling co-author of the Nanny Diaries Nicola Kraus takes on parenting, working and her deep-seated belief that coffee should be provided free-of-charge to all moms by the government.

For Christmas, my daughter wanted a Barbie Glam Pool. She wrote numerous letters to Santa about its various features and pleaded her case when she met him in person. Moved by her conviction and consistency of vision, into the shopping cart it went, followed by a Bikini Barbie to complete the tableau.

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But when the Barbie arrived I was momentarily confused. Something was—off.I double-checked the package. No, this wasn't Skipper. Poor, pubescent Skipper, the doll the 1970s hippy moms bought my classmates, the doll that gathered dust under dust ruffles, the doll no one was attracted to. No, this was Barbie."David!" I called into the kitchen."Come look at this! Barbie lost her boobs!"

I was fascinated. I turned the box over and over in my hands. It was like running into an old friend who's lost too much weight, gotten bad plastic surgery, or let herself go.There was the same beguilingly sunny face, but the thing that made Barbie Barbie was gone. To quote Working Girl, she used to have, "a head for business and a bod for sin." And I'm sorry, but that's what attracted us.

That's when another light bulb went off—it had been hard to find a Barbie in a real fabric bikini—most of them now have what look like leotards painted on. It was so weird.Then I realized it was so the doll could never be completely naked! And you couldn't use it for what every Barbie since the first mold was poured has been used for—which is to simulate sex. (Ken literally has no other purpose).

I stood there holding the hot pink box and feeling so sad. Little girls are having this great outlet taken away for healthy exploration of their nascent sexuality. And anybody who doesn't think pre-pubescent girls have nascent sexuality never was one.

Anybody who doesn't think pre-pubescent girls have nascent sexuality never was one.

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Beyond flattening Barbie's chest, this week Mattel unveiled their new line of Barbies in three shapes—curvy, tall, and petite. While making the doll—any doll—in a broad range of skin tones and ethnicities is vital, the range of body types seems like a Hail Mary to address a sales drop of 20 percent between 2012 and 2014. In a bid to appeal to millennial moms they think adjusting Barbie's physique will do the trick. But the $500 million they lost in the last few years to Disney princesses, all of whom have the same old hourglass shape, tells me moms buy what their daughters are drawn to.

And no, I don't think this is going to solve anybody's body image issues.

Not in a world where every image they see is Photoshopped. Where friends of mine in the advertising industry spend their days putting models' heads on entirely CGId bodies because the models aren't tall—or skinny—enough for the client. Where the average age of first porn exposure is eight.

"I don't think this is going to solve anybody's body image issues. Not in a world where every image they see is Photoshopped."

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Eight. I would much rather Sophie find an outlet with plastic than go searching on the Internet during a playdate the way we once sniffed out dads' Playboys.

That worries me. I worry that, at some point, Sophie is going to have a level of sexual information come pouring at her that her little brain can't process. I worry that she will grow up only engaging with boys who have had access to what John Mayer calls,"three hundred vaginas before breakfast." I worry that every boy she ever hooks up with will be bad in bed because they've been watching such a high volume of women paid to pretend uncomfortable things are comfortable.

But since we don't know how to put that genie back in the bottle we focus on the things we feel in control of. When I was pregnant my feed was filled with moms complaining about their daughters' love of princesses and strategizing how to raise them in a princess-free zone. Honestly, my feeling is, it's the last time you're the star of the story until Hunger Games. And after Hunger Games you're just hoping Nancy Meyers thinks of something for you.

Sophie has a pink room and an Elsa costume—and is having a Batman theme for her birthday. I believe when not pushed, rewarded, or punished for going in one way or the other the animus and anima will always find balance.

So here's the end of the story: Sophie found the Barbie in the drawer before her birthday and she wasn't drawn to it. She asked me to give it to her friend, Mamie, for her birthday. She wants to keep playing with the ones from my childhood, the ones that look like Jayne Mansfield. Because who doesn't want to fantasize about rolling into a boardroom, a gunfight, or a surgical theatre looking like Angelina Jolie? That's why they're called fantasies.

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And when it comes to body image, women do more harm to their daughters by criticizing their own bodies or dieting in front of them. Children do what we do, not what we say.

So here's my plan: When my daughter enters the Age of Body Consciousness, I'm going to take her to my gym every day for a week and make her sit in the locker room and look at all the gorgeous women coming and going in the nine o'clock hour until she internalizes that once that Lu-on peels off, the boobs droop, the cellulite ripples to life, the tummy skin sags. Boobs and asses come in hundreds of different shapes and sizes. No one looks like a magazine spread. And yet these are all happy, loved women. Someone committed to spend the rest of their life looking at that scar, or that dimple.

That's what it all comes down to—a fear. That we are not enough. That the shape of our—you name it—will somehow cost us something we can't even name.

Because that's what it all comes down to—a fear. That we are not enough. That the shape of our—you name it—will somehow cost us something we can't even name. Which is why it's our number one job as moms to say as often as possible, you are loved and loveable just as you are. And, just as importantly, I am loved and loveable just as I am.

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